Cars of the year and other important stuff

December 21, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

BMW sold 100,000 electric vehicles in 2017 well ahead of the 60,000 it sold last year. The company sais it plans to offer a dozen fully electric cars by 2025 and it has a 4-door sedan in the pipeline for 2021 according to Tech Crunch.

Meanwhile USA Today reports the Honda Clarity won Green Car of the Year Award, though the paper didn’t say who sponsors the award. The Clarity is available with three power plant options, plug-in electric, hydrogen and battery powered. It’s the first car to be available in these three ways.

Also, the Chevrolet Bolt was named North American Car of the Year according to a USA Today story that again doesn’t name the sponsoring organization. What gives with these guys? According to the article the Bolt costs in the neighborhood of $30k and has a range of 238 miles on a fully charged battery.

The details are important for all of these stories and you should read them. But even more important is the evidence they provide of a paradigm unmistakably shifting. Not only are EV’s entering the market to displace fossil fuel cars but the evidence shows that the free market is starting to impact seller and buyer decisions. This is a grass roots led evolution. As driving habits change we can expect to see more public charging stations in garages and parking lots as well as home charging units sprouting in the suburbs. The result will be fewer emissions an important but not sufficient part of warding off climate disaster. Next stop, building better carbon sinks.